The Chicago Police Department has enacted its first broad guidelines for discipline against officers who commit misconduct, taking a step to standardize punishments that experts have encouraged for years.
Many questions remain, however, about the impact the department’s advisory disciplinary guidelines will have on the city’s famously defective system for punishing wayward cops. Union officials, meanwhile, are considering fighting the guidelines’ implementation.
The new "complaint register matrix" took effect Wednesday and resembles guidelines in place in some other big-city police departments.
The guidelines offer top department officials and disciplinary authorities a range of punishments for numerous common violations. As is the case with judges considering criminal sentences, supervisors are instructed to consider "mitigating factors," such as an officer’s inexperience or acknowledgment of wrongdoing, as well as "aggravating factors" that could include attempts to cover up misconduct.
For using profanity, for example, a supervisor could seek anything from a finding of "violation noted" in an officer’s file — which has little practical impact — to a 15-day suspension. For an unjustified shooting, the range runs from as low as a 30-day suspension to dismissal, but there is a presumption that the officer will be fired unless there are factors in the cop’s favor.
The matrix is advisory, and the department brass and disciplinary authorities will continue to have broad discretion over what discipline to seek, though the new guidelines hold that a supervisor who deviates from the range must write a memo justifying the decision.
Police superintendent asks IG to look into incident involving fiancee’s son Jeremy Gorner
Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has asked the city’s watchdog to look into whether Johnson’s fiancee, a police supervisor, inappropriately intervened for her son on a traffic offense, a police spokesman said.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Johnson asked the office…
Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has asked the city’s watchdog to look into whether Johnson’s fiancee, a police supervisor, inappropriately intervened for her son on a traffic offense, a police spokesman said.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Johnson asked the office…
(Jeremy Gorner)
Some offenses come with ranges that nearly run the gamut of punishments; the recommended punishment for using a racial slur, for example, runs from a one-day suspension to firing.
The guidelines come less than a month after the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed the defects of the disciplinary system in its long-awaited report that portrayed a broken Police Department in which officers commit misconduct and use excessive force with little fear of repercussions.
Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the agency consulted with Justice Department officials, and the federal report indicates that investigators saw early drafts of the matrix and made suggestions, some of which were incorporated.
The guidelines enacted Wednesday, however, do not follow some of the recommendations the Justice Department made that the report described as "difficult but critical." Federal authorities, for example, criticized vague language in the draft guidelines, calling them a "set of guiding principles" that might not apply in "unique and exceptional circumstances."
2 cops involved in controversial shootings to become training officers Dan Hinkel
Following the U.S. Department of Justice’s withering criticism of the Chicago Police Department’s training efforts, top police officials have vowed to improve a field training program that matches rookies with seasoned cops for on-the-job mentoring and education.
Yet two cops currently in training…
Following the U.S. Department of Justice’s withering criticism of the Chicago Police Department’s training efforts, top police officials have vowed to improve a field training program that matches rookies with seasoned cops for on-the-job mentoring and education.
Yet two cops currently in training…
(Dan Hinkel)
The language the Justice Department criticized appeared in the enacted guidelines.
Officials from the department’s largest union, the Fraternal Order of Police Chicago lodge, believe the guidelines should have been part of the upcoming contract negotiations, said President Dean Angelo Sr. He criticized the department’s "rush" to install the guidelines and said union officials Wednesday were weighing options for fighting their implementation. Union leaders were scheduled to discuss the matter Thursday morning with department officials, Angelo said.
A frequent critic of the department, civil rights attorney Jon Loevy offered qualified praise for the guidelines as "a positive step." He noted that the guidelines call for firing in most instances of lying in reports, official statements or testimony, an apparent effort to prevent further allegations of dishonesty like the ones that have plagued the department.
"The test is going to be whether this actually changes anything," he said. "Everybody is a little tired of pieces of paper."
The most serious, high-profile cases will continue to go to the Chicago Police Board, which is not bound by the disciplinary guidelines as it decides on long suspensions or whether to fire officers. Beyond the Police Board, officers often challenge heavy discipline to the Cook County courts, which are also independent of department rules.
The matrix cannot address another key issue with the city’s police disciplinary system — that officers have generally avoided punishment because disciplinary authorities have rarely upheld citizen complaints. The city’s main police oversight body, the Independent Police Review Authority, is known for haphazard investigations that have cleared officers in all but a slim percentage of cases.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration is in the process of replacing IPRA with the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which is intended to have more funding and wider authority. It has yet to be seen, however, whether the new agency will improve upon its predecessor.
IPRA officials consulted with the Police Department on the guidelines, though the disciplinary agency’s leaders see the matrix as "a work in progress," said IPRA spokeswoman Mia Sissac.
Calls to fix the police disciplinary system gained traction during the scandal sparked in late 2015 by video footage of a white officer shooting African-American teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. That incident unleashed a flood of grievances about Chicago’s police, and many complaints centered on the city’s failure to punish officers for questionable uses of force or other allegations.
The department has never used a matrix for most disciplinary cases, though experts and panels have suggested it for years. In December 2014, for example, a little-noticed report commissioned by the city on the police disciplinary system called for a matrix to standardize punishments.
Unlike prior changes to policing in Chicago, neither City Hall nor the Police Department sought to widely publicize the guidelines as they took effect Wednesday. The Tribune was provided the matrix upon request, a full day after requesting it.
dhinkel@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @dhinkel
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
